Trevor Bauer’s legal troubles will officially end his 2021 season.
The Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander will miss the rest of the season after MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to once again extend his administrative leave, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
Bauer has been on paid administrative leave since July 2, days after a woman filed for a temporary restraining order against him and accused him of assault during two sexual encounters. That restraining order has since been lifted after a judge denied a permanent order, saying she found no evidence that Bauer was likely to cause future harm or have contact with the woman.
Where Trevor Bauer goes from here
While the restraining order is no longer in place, Bauer remains under investigation by the Pasadena Police Department, but has yet to be arrested or charged with any crime. Another accuser has also come forward with claims of a similar incident in 2017, when he was with Cleveland.
Bauer’s camp has called that second allegation “categorically false,” while insisting the encounter this year was entirely consensual.
MLB has extended Bauer’s administrative leave several times since the allegations first came to light, a strategy the league often follows when a player is being investigated by authorities for domestic violence. Typically, such uses of administrative leave have resulted in a suspension with the leave counted as time served.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred does not need Bauer to be convicted or even charged to levy a suspension against him, and testimony from the restraining order hearing could be used to make such a decision. The longest an MLB player has ever been suspended for domestic violence is reliever Sam Dyson’s suspension for the entire 2021 season.
Bauer is in the first year of a three-year, $102 million deal signed with the Dodgers in free agency last offseason. While on paid leave, he is set to make $28 million this season and $32 million next season, having already received a $10 million signing bonus. He has opt-outs after both this season and next, but seems unlikely to use them at this point.
A suspension would save the Dodgers several millions of dollars in salary for Bauer, and it’s unclear if he ever appears in a Dodger uniform again. To date, his Dodgers career consists of 17 starts, in which he posted a 2.59 ERA and 137 strikeouts in 107.2 innings.